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Sam is also responsible for introducing another of those cardinal sins of game mechanics-the escort mission. Ash and Sam get expelled out of some demon’s rear end (something which happens four or five times during the game, actually) and Sam ends up with a big corn-studded turd on his face. He’s slapstick at best, juvenile at worst. While Evil Dead is mostly funny because of Bruce Campbell’s ridiculous one-liners (in my opinion), Sam’s jokes are consistently flat. Sam’s humor isn’t nearly up to the quality I expect from the Evil Dead series. Here’s the problem: they made a character that’s actually annoying and you have to put up with him the whole damn game.Īnd it’s not just his voice. Obviously Sam is supposed to be irksome to Ash too. Many times over the course of the game (as in, practically every two minutes) Bruce Campbell reiterates how annoying Sam is. I can see what the developers were going for. His voice was literally one of the most grating sounds I’ve ever heard. I didn’t think that was possible, but there it is. Unfortunately, Sam (voiced by Ted Raimi) also sounds like Gilbert Gottfried’s even-more-annoying cousin. It’s not exactly a bad mechanic, though also not one requiring a ton of thought. You kick Sam into objects in the environment, he breaks them or tweaks them in some way, then dies in some occasionally-funny way and the path ahead is cleared. Sam’s death mechanic is actually built into most of the game’s puzzles, as well as the combat. He can be “killed,” but he’s already undead so he just respawns again nearby. Your sidekick, Sam, has some practical uses. Now you’re telling me I need a damn sidekick? Bruce “chainsaw attached to my arm” Campbell. What the hell? I am Bruce “the king himself” Campbell. Early on in the game, the ghostly, disembodied head of Professor Knowby makes it clear Ash needs to take along a sidekick to finish his task. On the other hand, there are so many glaring flaws with the fundamental design of the game, and they’re all related back to one character. If you looked at screenshots of the game you might not be impressed, but at least you wouldn’t throw up. Combat and animations are fluid and dynamic, the sound design is a damn sight better than the last two games, and textures are almost pleasant. Regeneration is, in many aspects, a modern game. Reinhard and try to banish the deadites a second time. Unfortunately, the man in charge of the mental hospital does believe Ash, and uses the Necronomicon to welcome evil back into the world. Instead, everyone believes Ash is some ranting psychopath who butchered all his closest friends. Nobody believes his story about the Necronomicon and the evil beings who attacked him. After escaping from the deadites at the cabin, Ash is sent to a mental hospital. Regardless, Regeneration’s tutorial picks up back at the Knowby cabin with Ash reliving a few of the memorable moments from Evil Dead 2. Unfortunately, that means no resolution to the ending we saw in Fistful of Boomstick, and that means the Evil Dead games are 0 for 2 in terms of actually resolving their damn cliffhanger endings. In other words Regeneration picks up after Evil Dead 2, if that film concluded without Ash getting sucked into a portal and into the past. Regeneration takes place in an alternate time line from the last two Evil Dead games-one in which the actual Sam Raimi film Army of Darkness never happened. In fact, this game is perhaps even more deserving of the Army of Darkness award than Fistful of Boomstick. “But that doesn’t make any sense!” I hear you scream. I’m afraid I have to say Regeneration is also the Army of Darkness of Evil Dead video games. Or, I hope that’s the case, because it isn’t. As far as I can tell, Regeneration doesn’t want to be scary. “If Hail to the King was the ‘Evil Dead’ of Evil Dead video games, and Fistful of Boomstick was ‘Army of Darkness,’ then Regeneration must be…Evil Dead 2!”Įvil Dead: Regeneration is a serviceable game, just like Fistful of Boomstick, but it never finds that perfect balance between funny and scary exhibited in Evil Dead 2. Written by Hayden Dingman, reader, I can hear you puzzling this out in your brain. Have a game you’d like reviewed? Send us an email. Welcome to Ghosts of Gaming Past - here we’ll be reviewing older horror games, classics and non-classics we missed when they were originally released.